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Alternate Unit Icons + Fort/Coastal Fort

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I've floated these around in CORE, but I thought I'd open an "official" thread to make it generally available.

First up are new "sprites" for the Fort and Coastal Fort. They do not shade out for fog-of-war, but I don't consider this a problem. Somebody who loves messing with pallettes can feel free to modify it and post it here, if you'd like.

Here's the file: HoI Alt Forts

(1) Rename (or otherwise back up) your fort.bmp and coastal_fort.bmp files.

(2)Unzip the file contents to your Hearts of Iron\Gfx\Map folder.

Enjoy new looking fortifications.

HoIaltnewcoastalfortjpg.jpg

fort.gif


Second up are the new unit icons for unit display (not the moving sprites you see on-map) and unit build screen. I think they look much better than the originals. If you have a request for a specific unit type to be the generic (like an B-26 instead of the B-25), just let me know. I may change it just for you. :) In addition, I have thought about making a set for each major nation (USA, Commonwealth, Germany, USSR, Japan, and Italy). I don't know yet. Also, there is someone currently working on modifying this file of mine to make it look even better. :D So, we'll see how that goes.

Here's the file: HoI Alt Forts

(1) Rename (or otherwise back up) your units.bmp and units_small.bmp files.

(2)Unzip the file contents to your Hearts of Iron\Gfx\Interface folder.

Enjoy new looking icons.

units_icons_preview.gif



If you notice any glaring problems with any of these files, please let me know.

You can also e-mail me at colonelkraken@hotmail.com

--CK
 
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Lothos said:
Some good stuff. If you are good with making sprites could really use some help on the Super AI Bundle once we get closer to a release date.
Click to expand...

Do you mean unit sprites? I'm not sure I know how to do this. I have looked into it, and it seems it would not be too awfully difficult --just time consuming.

At any rate, what did you have in mind?

Thanks,

CK
 
Well we are going to need sprites for atleast the major powers and then generic ones for the minors. I am not sure how many levels of sprites you can have. I saw in SR website that they had 4 layers for each items (like armor) but if we can have more than 4 levels that would be great.
 
I've been very curious about this myself. I asked this very question myself in another forum, but never got a response. I, too, would like to know how many levels of each type of unit there are (armor, fighters, bombers, etc.). Perhaps vanilla HoI does not untilize the full potential of sprite variation.

See if you can find out about this.

Thanks,

CK
 
Kraken, i've been messing around with fort palettes trtying to make the sprites shade with the fog of war, and i've come to the conlusion that the only way to achieve it is using the exactly the same palette as the original .bmps . That would leave little color possibilities for the bunker, but enough for the sea. That's the best i could make with the coastalfort:

forts.jpg


AS you see, it shades, but it's not very colorful :(
 
Re: sprite levels I think it's

armour : 4 levels
fighters : 3 levels
pretty much everything else : 1 level

That's hardcoded, and Johan has already said he wouldn't be adding more levels. :(

I also bothered to check the model numbers at which the new sprites are activated once, but I can't find the paper where I wrote that down. It's in the CORE sub-forum somewhere, IIRC.
 
N!ghtY said:
Kraken, i will add your stuf to the Stony Road site tomorrow.
Click to expand...

Thanks Nighty.

nachinus said:
Kraken, i've been messing around with fort palettes trtying to make the sprites shade with the fog of war,

AS you see, it shades, but it's not very colorful :(
Click to expand...

Nice try anyway. I wonder how it does this exactly. Also, since you did this, do you know how to reduce colors to 256 but keep certain pallette indexes reserved? For example, I think it would be possible to make these forts shade with more colors, if I could keep pallette indexes 1 and 2 open for the transparency and shading colors. Do you know how to do this?

Gwalcmai said:
Re: sprite levels I think it's

armour : 4 levels
fighters : 3 levels
pretty much everything else : 1 level

That's hardcoded, and Johan has already said he wouldn't be adding more levels. :(

I also bothered to check the model numbers at which the new sprites are activated once, but I can't find the paper where I wrote that down. It's in the CORE sub-forum somewhere, IIRC.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the help. It would be great to know at what tech, etc. the new sprites can be/are activated.

Thanks,

CK
 
Colonel Kraken said:
. Also, since you did this, do you know how to reduce colors to 256 but keep certain pallette indexes reserved? For example, I think it would be possible to make these forts shade with more colors, if I could keep pallette indexes 1 and 2 open for the transparency and shading colors. Do you know how to do this?
CK
Click to expand...
The problem is that to be shaded it needs EXACTLY the same palette, i mean the same colors in the same places that the original one. If you decrease colour depth to 256 (the depth of the original gfx) still doesn't work. You have to save the original pal, and load it in your gfx. It's really weird, i know, i don't know how it works that way. I really though that a 256 palette with the correct format (2 first colours magenta and light blue) should work fine, like in unit sprtites, but it doesn't work.

The only thing that i can think of is that maybe, like with unitsprites, HoI uses a reference palette file for those gfx. If we find that reference file, we can give it the correct palette we want to use (just like with unitsprites).
 
N!ghtY said:
if i remember the palette issue right from the time i made sprites i had to keep the first two places constant, but was alllowed to shuffle around all other indexes manually. Cannot verify this for graphics however
Click to expand...

I actually already tried this. It did not work, much like nachinus said.
 
Equipment Choice

Ok, I would like to know what types of aircraft to use for each major nation. It might take me a while, but I'd like to have a different unit icon set for each major nation, just to give the game some flavor when you're playing. So, when you play as Germany, you could "load" the German unit icons; and, when you play USSR, you could "load" the Soviet unit icons. Also, I'll probably put in a different tank picture for each. Possibly I'll do some different infantry as well. No promises.

Germany:

Tank: Panther, PzIV?
Fighter: ME-109 [done]
Strat Bomb: ??
Tac Bomb: He-111 [done]
Dive Bomb: Stuka [done]
Naval Bomb: Condor 2000?
Torp Bomb: ??
Transport: Ju-52 [done]

USA:

Tank: M-4
Fighter: P-47, P-38, P-51?
Strat Bomb: B-17 [done]
Tac Bomb: B-25 [done]
Dive Bomb: ??
Naval Bomb: PBY Catalina [done]
Torp Bomb: Avenger?
Transport: C-47?

Commonwealth:

Tank: Crommwell?
Fighter: Spitfire [done]
Strat Bomb: various ??
Tac Bomb: Mosquito?
Dive Bomb: ??
Naval Bomb: ??
Torp Bomb: Swordfish
Transport: ??

USSR:

Tank: T-34
Fighter: LaaG-3, Yak-9?
Strat Bomb: Pe-3, 10?
Tac Bomb: Il-2
Dive Bomb: Pe-2??
Naval Bomb: ??
Torp Bomb: ??
Transport: ??

Japan:

Tank: Ha-Go [done]
Fighter: Zero
Strat Bomb: ??
Tac Bomb: Mary??
Dive Bomb: Val
Naval Bomb: Betty?
Torp Bomb: Kate [done]
Transport: ??



Let me know what you guys think.

--CK
 
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N!ghtY said:
well, we should leave aside italy and the usa completely.
the japan navy is complete but the japan army is sparse, as is the uk army.
germany also waits for proper tanks!
Click to expand...

This isn't for unit sprites. This is merely the unit icons that you see off to the right when you click on your unit "stack".
 
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